Russia’s glide bombs were unstoppable – but Ukraine has made them useless
In a single week in September 2024, Russia dropped more than 900 glide bombs along its 800-mile front line with Ukraine, according to Ukrainian estimates.
Ukraine was almost powerless to stop the long-range weapons – and the consequences were devastating.
Known as Russia’s “miracle weapon”, glide bombs would routinely be used to wipe out key Ukrainian targets, from logistics bases to army headquarters. Fitted with wings and satellite-aided navigation, each weighed as much as three tons.
However, 12 months later, Russia’s glide bombs are effectively useless, owing to the sudden success of Ukrainian radio jammers.
Fighterbomber, a Telegram channel run by an anonymous Russian pilot, said Ukrainian jammers had “saturated the front line”, blocking the glide bombs’ internal navigation systems.
“All satellite-guided correction systems have left the chat,” the pilot said.
Credit: Russian Ministry of Defence
That does not mean Russia has stopped dropping glide bombs. But they are often turned into duds, landing in fields far from their intended targets, rather than smashing into Ukrainian reserve forces or an army division’s headquarters.
Jammers – which can take the form of individual decoys or form part of a jet’s wider defence system, as with western-made F16s – block enemy systems by emitting interfering signals.
According to Fighterbomber, it now often takes as many as 16 glide bombs to hit a single target.
Just months ago, Kyiv appeared helpless to stop the bombs. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, told the Financial Times at the end of 2024 that “you cannot jam [glide bombs], you cannot hide from them”.
Mr Withington told The Telegraph the Russian glide bombs “should have been designed and outfitted with a robust global navigation system, which receives an encrypted signal and should be resistant to jamming”.
“To put it bluntly, Russian glide bombs should not be getting jammed,” Tom Withington, a weapons expert at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, explained.
This means that either the Russian glide bombs were so poorly designed that they are susceptible to jamming, or Ukraine has found ways to overcome protections built into the weapons.
Given that Russia had been successfully using glide bombs for several months, it is more likely to be the latter.
It is a significant development, given the devastation the bombs were causing as recently as November, helping Russian troops make their fastest advance since the war began. Their new ineffectiveness may have contributed towards the fact that Russian advances slowed for the third month in a row in February.
The news will challenge Donald Trump and JD Vance’s belief that Kyiv has no chance of pushing Russia back or maintaining its current positions.
And the impact on the front line could be significant, degrading Russia’s ability to attack Ukraine at its rear, which has been a key part of the Kremlin’s strategy of attrition.
Before sending in hordes of soldiers, Russian forces are known for launching intense bombardments to weaken Ukrainian positions, creating confusion and inflicting initial casualties along the front line.
“Now, Ukraine is preventing Russia from being able to hit targets reliably behind the front line. [Moscow] can’t affect Ukrainian command and control, or disrupt logistics, meaning their forces can’t move at pace and manoeuvre in a way they desire along the battlefield,” Mr Withington explained.
There is concern that Ukraine’s progress with jamming, and across the battlefield, may be undermined by Mr Trump’s recent decision to pause all military aid and intelligence for Kyiv.
Europe has vowed to fill the void where necessary but experts have said it will be difficult for Ukraine to carry on fighting effectively beyond this summer, without US support.
But a source told The Telegraph that Ukraine’s European allies have already engaged with electronic warfare companies about whether they might ensure Kyiv’s jamming capabilities are maintained.
The pause in US aid and intelligence came amid reports that Ukraine has recently found success along the eastern front, reclaiming key positions and inflicting “unsustainable losses” on Russia.
On March 1 alone, Russia is thought to have lost 1,340 soldiers to death or injury, according to Ukrainian military estimates.
Ukrainian forces have advanced against Russian troops close to the major eastern cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, reclaiming some crucial positions, according to war bloggers.
However, the jamming of glide bombs is not a silver bullet, nor is it necessarily the primary reason for Russia’s slowing advances or Ukraine’s increasing success.
“Any tactical advantage is a culmination of a number of factors… All technological advances like these are usually temporary,” Mr Withington said.
And it is not only Ukraine that has had success with weapons-jamming. Ruslan Leviev, a military analyst at Conflict Intelligence Team, told The Telegraph that Russian jamming had forced Ukraine to stop using a number of weapons.
Mr Leviev said: “The impact of Russian jamming systems has been noted multiple times in this war. Because of them, the supply of high-precision Excalibur artillery shells was halted.” The Excalibur is a US-supplied GPS-guided artillery shell.
Ukraine’s increasing success in jamming, a form of electronic warfare (EW), is not limited to glide bombs but also applies to drones.
Ukraine is increasingly able to intercept Shahed drones and turn them back into Russian or Belarusian airspace.
Innovations in Ukraine’s EW interference mean that the majority of Russian drones are intercepted, lost, or turned astray, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank.
Some 38 Russian Shahed drones entered Belarusian airspace on Nov 25, forcing Minsk to scramble several fighter jets in response.
Of the 110 Shahed drones and decoys launched at Ukraine on Dec 1 and Dec 2, 50 were lost due to EW interference and 52 more were shot down, according to Petro Chernyk, a Ukrainian military expert.
Source link
